John Miles

Major John Miles is presented through two linked episodes: his readiness to hold an exposed artillery position during the Meuse-Argonne offensive and the loyalty Harry S. Truman later showed him in a local election. Miles’s importance in the account rests not on a broad biography, but on a decision made under pressure that Truman remembered as proof of his courage and as the reason a political choice should not count against him.

Identity and the Meuse-Argonne position

On the afternoon of September 29, reports reached the American position that the infantry was losing ground. Stragglers streamed past, and a German counterattack seemed imminent. Truman was serving under Miles, his immediate superior. The men faced two stark alternatives: remain at their guns and fire point-blank at the advancing enemy, with the likelihood of death or capture, or abandon the guns and withdraw.

Miles chose to stand. He addressed the men directly: “Well, men,” Miles said. “Get ready and we’ll give them direct fire.” The order placed the battery in readiness to resist an attack rather than retreat from its position. The moment shows Miles exercising command at the point where the choice between holding ground and preserving the unit could no longer be treated as abstract.

Courage without a final sacrifice

The anticipated attack never came. The men were not forced to carry out the direct-fire order, and Miles and his unit did not face the final sacrifice that the decision had risked. Lieutenant Lee nevertheless judged their conduct inspiring, praising their coolness, steady courage, and readiness to stand fast. The absence of a battle at the position did not erase the significance of the choice: Miles had prepared his men to hold when retreat appeared to be the alternative.

The wider fighting was costly. Infantry casualties in the 35th Division reached as high as 50 percent, and wounded men crowded the dressing station at Cheppy. That broader context helps explain why Truman’s later recollection emphasized the threatened counterattack and the small force standing between the American line and a successful German attack. Miles’s significance to Truman was bound to a particular crisis, but it arose amid an offensive in which the danger was immediate and losses elsewhere were severe.

A wartime bond in a county campaign

In the campaign for eastern judge, Truman’s opponents had produced one charge against him: that in the 1920 election he had voted for a Republican, Miles, for County Marshal. In the political climate of Jackson County, the vote was serious enough to require an explanation. Truman chose to answer publicly, not by minimizing the choice but by describing the relationship behind it.

He recalled seeing Miles in circumstances where French soldiers were falling back and where Miles and his three batteries stood between the American line and a successful counterattack. Truman said, “I was closer to John Miles than a brother.” He argued that voting for a comrade under those circumstances was consistent with loyalty to himself and his country, and insisted, “I have no apology to make for it.” He also made clear that Miles was the only Republican he had voted for. The defense thus joined personal allegiance to a claim about military service: Miles’s actions had earned a loyalty that party division could not cancel.

Truman’s account gave the political charge an unexpected force. What opponents offered as evidence against him became, in his telling, evidence of the obligations created by shared danger. He said that Miles and his wartime comrades were closer than brothers, a feeling he could not describe. At that moment, the account says, many listeners regarded the primary as effectively decided and Truman as the winner.

Narrative significance

Miles appears briefly, but his conduct has consequences beyond the wartime scene. His decision to prepare for direct fire supplied the concrete memory Truman later used to explain a politically vulnerable vote. The episodes therefore connect command under threat with loyalty in civilian politics: Truman’s support for Miles was not presented as an ordinary partisan preference, but as recognition of a superior whose courage he had witnessed.

The account does not trace Miles’s later career or describe the result of the County Marshal election. Its portrait remains focused on what Truman saw and remembered: a commander who chose to stand, a threatened attack that never arrived, and a wartime relationship strong enough for Truman to defend openly before his constituents.